Fighting To Change A Chauvinistic Society
by Tim Madigan
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
In 20 years as an investigative journalist, Brian Barger had exposed misdeeds of Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal, uncovered a CIA assassination manual, and taken on Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
Then, last April, his life and career would take an abrupt and surprising turn. He was dispatched to Juarez by the Cable News Network to cover the murders of scores of poor young women and the specter of a serial killer. What he found profoundly moved him: a community so grief-stricken, desperate, and chauvinistic that it shredded his journalistic reserve. After a week of reporting in Mexico, Barger asked to be removed from the story.
It was then that Barger's real involvement with the story of Juarez began. He spent much of the next year working on his own time to create a rape crisis first center in Juarez, an idea that came to him on his first reporting trip. Barger resigned from CNN in January to found the International Trauma Research Center, an organization to assist victims of trauma across the developing world. Both his bosses and his friends wonder if he's crazy.
Barger, 46, who is single but has a daughter in college, only chuckles.
"I have found immense gratification in being able to go beyond simply telling a story and actually lending a hand to people in need."
The doggedness required for investigative reporting has come in handy. Through his lobbying, Juarez Mayor Gustavo Elizondo agreed to pay the rent and three salaries for the new rape crisis center. At Barger's urging, the Texas attorney general's office agreed to help train Juarez rape crisis volunteers. Barger helped secure a $25,000 grant from a foundation in neighborhood El Paso.
Then on a sunny Saturday morning last month, Barger joined relatives of the slain women, leading Juarez feminists, business leaders, and government officials from Mexico and Texas to christen Casa Amiga, or Friend's House. The spacious 1-story building on a quiet street near downtown Juarez is only the fourth rape crisis center in Mexico, the first in a Mexican border city.
"It gave us the opportunity to talk about basic things," says Barger. "It's not okay to engage in domestic violence. It's not okay to rape your wife. It's not okay to commit incest. It was a message that echoed across Juarez."
Esther Chavez brandished a copy of that day's newspaper like a club, pacing behind her desk at Casa Amiga.
"I am angry about this," said Chavez, Juarez's leading feminist and Casa Amiga's first executive director. "I want to fight with this man. I'm going to write a terrible letter."
Her pique was directed to Arturo Gonzalez Rascon, attorney general of the state of Chihuahua. Speaking to reporters in Juarez about the slayings of young women, likely the work of one or more serial killers, Rascon seemed to suggest that the victims were at least in part to blame.
"Because of their life conditions, the places where they go about their life, they are at risk," Rascon was quoted as saying. "It would be very difficult for someone to go out in the street when it's raining...it would be very hard not to get wet."
Chavez was almost spitting behind her desk.
"He's not an attorney general," Chavez said. "He talks like an old priest. He has to respect women. He's stupid, and I'm going to tell him."
But something in her eyes suggested that the petite, red-haired woman relished the fight. She had moved to Juarez in 1982 after 20 years as a successful businesswoman in Mexico City. On arriving here, she felt a tug toward humanitarian concerns in the troubled city.
But not until 1992, when the state proposed outlawing abortion, was Chavez finally prompted to action. Chavez, a single woman now in her 60s, has been fighting ever since.
She organized a women's group that lobbied for, among other things, tougher penalties for sexual assault. She began writing a column on women's issues for a Juarez newspaper. She compiled what many believe is the most accurate and comprehensive list of the female murder victims. In 1996, she helped create a coalition of 18 women's groups to pressure law enforcement, which the women accused of being incompetent and indifferent to the killings.
When Barger met Chavez last year, she seemed a natural to head the rape crisis center.
"We have to fight very, very hard to alter the society, to get the same rights as men," she says at her desk, which is adorned by a framed photograph of her and Barger, both of them smiling broadly in a happy moment. "We are going step by step by step."
Chavez concedes that in Mexico, it will be a very long journey. To her, Rascon's comments are symptomatic of deeply ingrained chauvinism afflicting Mexican society. Another indicator: In Mexico, maximum punishment for the most serious sexual assaults is only 15 years in prison - compared with life behind bars in Texas. Because of societal taboos, victimized Mexican women, even more so than rape victims in the United States, are unlikely to report the crimes or seek help.
"Our culture says that rape should be kept in the house," Chavez says. "It is not good to go public. The clothing is washed at home. That is a problem, no?
"Marital rape is considered a right of the man, and when some women decide to go to police, she receives another rape because the police and the doctors think that she's guilty, that she goes to some places and dresses a certain way."
Prevailing societal attitudes exacerbate an already perilous situation for women here, feminist leaders say. The combination of alcohol and the cramped one-room huts that tens of thousands live in contributes to an epidemic of incest and family violence. In a city bustling with hundreds of foreign-owned factories, called "maquiladoras", thousands of vulnerable young women find themselves on the streets, making their way to and from work. Most of the victims of what police call sexual homicides - women who in the last several years have been snatched away into the desert, raped and tortured - have worked for 'maquiladoras', local journalists say.
Thousands of other women who survive their sexual attacks need professional help, feminist leaders say, but only a small percentage will receive it. For Chavez, at the end of another 15-hour day, the problems can seem overwhelming. One recent night at Casa Amiga, as she spoke about the Mexican poverty, chauvinism and the killings, her weary sighs echoed in the empty building, which had yet to begin 24-hour operation.
Then came a rapping at the front door. It was a woman who said her 8 year old daughter had been raped by a neighbor. The police had questioned the man, but released him for lack of evidence. Yet the mother said she had learned her daughter's attacker had a history of sexual violence in El Paso.
Chavez spoke to the woman for several minutes, making an appointment to see her in the morning. When she returned to her desk, the weariness was gone. The neighborhood must know of this man, she said. Maybe women's group could demonstrate near his home. Another fight loomed.
Copyright 1999 Fort Worth Star-Telegram